Ozarks Technical Community College is moving forward with a second phase of upgrades to Lincoln Hall.
The college’s Board of Trustees on April 10 approved a construction contract with Nesbitt Construction for $644,500 to renovate portions of the building. The total project is budgeted at $859,032.59.
This phase, in a nutshell, updates non-classroom areas of the building to match the look of recently updated ones — especially a renovated entrance on the building’s eastern side. A bulk of the work will be on Lincoln 211, a large community room that can be used for public events, said spokesperson Mark Miller. The room used to be the gymnasium of the historic Lincoln School.
“There is a small stage in there,” Miller said. “We sometimes have nursing pinning ceremonies and other small graduation ceremonies in there, but it can also be booked out to the public for different things.”
The project calls for renovating the community room, conference room, suite of health science offices and two restrooms, according to documentation provided to trustees. The work includes renovating floors, painting walls, replacing lighting, updating AV systems and applying new restroom finishes.
When completed, the community room will match the hall’s updated entryway, right down to the wainscoting. Last year that entry was updated with an art deco look, modern lighting and displays of the building’s history.
Lincoln Hall has already had $2.1 million in expansions; about $1.5 million of that money came from a federal Health Resources and Services Administration grant. The remainder came from college funds.
That work helped accommodate growing programs for practical nursing and surgical technology and included a new nursing lab hoped to boost the average number of practical nursing graduates from 60 to 80.
This next phase will be paid for out of the college’s bond funds. Miller said the project is hoped to be completed in time for the fall 2024 semester, set to start on Aug. 19. No other work is immediately planned for the building after completion.
Opened in 1931, the building started as Lincoln School, and served Springfield’s Black population before integration. It was one of almost 5,000 Rosenwald Schools built between 1912 and 1937, and remains one of only a handful to still serve as a school building.
